Sunday, August 27, 2017

I was fairly shocked when, on Friday evening, I saw an announcement abruptly stating that Spartan Games, makers of the tabletop
miniatures games Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada, and their spinoffs, had
gone out of business. I had assumed based on what I believed was a moderately
successful Kickstarter campaign to add to Dystopian Wars last year, along with
the launching of a Firestorm Kickstarter, that things were puttering along.
It's true to say that the game I actually collected, Dystopian Legions, had
fallen by the wayside, but as one of the regular contributors to the Legions
section of the Spartan forums I myself had recently answered a call for the
formation of a new official group of fans aimed at revisiting and discussing
the future of that game. The very sudden announcement of the closure suggests
to me that the company's directors did not themselves expect the need to close
when it occurred. Seemingly a point was reached at which debts could not be
paid. I've never studied business, but this is what I gather from what I've
read online.

I think there are a few reasons to account for Spartan's
unfortunate demise. I intend to sketch the external ones before considering the
internal ones in-depth. Obviously, tabletop gaming is a very competitive
market. The combined revival or boom of board games along with the appearance
of new toy soldier games obviously means there are many more products vying for
consumers' attention than previously. Nonetheless, Spartan's two main games
seem to have filled something of a niche, as to my knowledge there isn't a glut
of naval combat games in the current market, and I get the impression that
Dystopian Wars was their most successful intellectual property; if so this was
probably because it occupied such a unique position. On the other hand, while
Games Workshop's Battlefleet Gothic doesn't have much presence anymore, I
suspect that in recent years Firestorm Armada faced increasing, and probably
insurmountable, rivalry from big-brand space combat games, particularly the
Star Wars franchise's Armada and X-Wing games. The other factors are, of
course, that running a business is, to the best of my very limited knowledge,
extremely challenging and that personal factors of health seem to have been an
issue as well.

To discuss Spartan's apparent issues from an outsider's perspective
obviously risks presuming a great deal. Not being privy to internal goings-on,
I can mostly discuss Spartan's reputation rather than anything factual.
However, since I became a collector of their products in, if I recall
correctly, late 2013, and having read discussion across the internet, the
following apparent problems seemed to be identified repeatedly.

How do you make guys who look like this and still not
manage to get stereotypical nerds to give you loads of money?

1. Lack of Focus

Almost certainly the most common complaint against Spartan
was that their company's direction lacked focus. When I started collecting,
Spartan had four main games: Uncharted Seas, Firestorm Armada, Dystopian Wars
and Dystopian Legions. Legions was, at the time, seemingly the latest big thing
as I believe there had been a recent number of releases fleshing out the four
starting armies of the game. Spartan promised three more armies in the near
future.

However, this never really came. Instead, the next big
release was Firestorm Planetfall, the ground-based game set in the Firestorm
Armada universe. This seemed reasonable enough to me, as it meant that now the
Firestorm and Dystopian settings had two levels of game. New releases for
Legions dried up, however, and with heavy focus now given to Planetfall the
promised additional armies only manifested in the shape of a couple of pieces
two or so years later. Only one of these was ever expanded upon, and that not
completely.

At this point I started to get the impression that Spartan's
approach was becoming a little unfocused. They had a particular problem of
telling their fans that things were coming, and even setting dates, and then
not matching the expectations they set up. I was rather bemused when Spartan
announced that they had made a deal with Microsoft to make games set in the
Halo universe, and as with everything else this rapidly expanded to both a
space game and a ground game, much like Firestorm. Spartan's own official
announcement admits that the Halo games distracted from the other products,
which rather leaves me wondering why Spartan took on the project in the first
place. Meanwhile it seemed there were occasional bursts of releases for
Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada, but I got the sense from what I read that
players of those games felt that there were deeper issues not being addressed.

All on board the Legions hype train that never left the station.

This came to a head when, in 2016, Spartan announced that
they were going to use Kickstarter to launch yet another game, "Dystopian
Empires", which was to be set at a scale between Wars and Legions. Fan
response was overwhelmingly negative, and after much consultation the
Kickstarter was reworked into a Dystopian Wars project intended to support the
existing game. Spartan seemed surprised at the fan response to the Dystopian
Empires proposal, which strongly suggested to me that they had lost touch with
their customer base and were becoming increasingly sidetracked by whichever pet
projects took their leaders' fancy at the time. Another indication of this was
observable in that, at a convention last year, rather than promoting all of
their existing games, Spartan instead demonstrated a "Weird World War
Two" game they had been working on in their spare time called
"Project Götterdämmerung", which was never released for purchase. It appeared
in fact that the "hobby" aspect of the "hobby company" had
taken over, in which the hobby interests of people running the company were
heavily distracting from running the business effectively.

All of this gave Spartan a reputation for spreading itself
too thin, trying to launch lots of games rather than develop them in depth.
Unfortunately, I would be inclined to argue that the launch of Dystopian
Legions was the first mistake, as this started the trend of more and more games
being launched. As Uncharted Seas was already passing out of focus, it seems to
me that Spartan's most sensible approach would have been to keep investing in
Firestorm Armada and Dystopian Wars and to have left the spinoff projects as
speculation. Perhaps then Spartan could have comfortably maintained itself
until such time as it was safe to try something new.

"I never even got my own rules!"

2. Lack of Market Research

As I have said, it seems that with Dystopian Wars in
particular Spartan had found a strong niche for 19th-century battleship combat
not provided by any other major system. Dystopian Legions, however, was a
different story. The game was trying to enter an extremely competitive 28mm war
game market with many established games. In addition, the game competed with
two major genres: the sci-fi war game market, traditionally dominated by Games
Workshop's Warhammer 40,000, and the historical war game market, which has had
countless rival manufacturers for years. The game was also released using exclusively
metal miniatures. While historical war gamers, who traditionally are from an
older generation or more mature market, would be accustomed to this, younger
game players, particularly of sci-fi games, are used to plastic, and perceive
metal models as cumbersome and irritating. Furthermore, as was repeatedly
pointed out, the Dystopian Legions models were of a slightly larger than 28mm
scale, being closer to 33mm, making them not entirely suitable for use in other
games. The Kingdom of Britannia models in particular could have been used under
different circumstances as substitutes for Games Workshop's Imperial Guard,
particularly the long-abandoned Praetorian army, but players were not willing
to use the larger models for this purpose. Spartan cannot really be blamed for
not making models which were usable in another company's game, but it's worth
noting that making a product which can also be used in the games of Games
Workshop, the biggest company in the market, is a very sensible way of
attracting custom from existing collectors. This is an approach which has
allowed Mantic Games to flourish.

Firestorm Planetfall, meanwhile, was trying to enter a
market for a vehicle-scale science fiction tabletop game, traditionally
occupied by Games Workshop's Epic 40,000 but more recently entered by the game
Dropzone Commander. Spartan was, therefore, probably not well-positioned to
enter this market, particularly when their customers were already desiring changes
for Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada, and when Dystopian Legions was not complete.

Not even these guys could heal the cash haemorrage.

Making a deal with Microsoft to produce Halo games seems to
have been a further unwise decision. Not only was this licensing deal probably
rather costly, it likely suffered from other drawbacks. One is that Halo
is simply not the hot property it was in the mid 2000s. The games are still
popular, but not traditionally with the same demographic as collects tabletop
games. Furthermore, by launching both a space battle and land battle game for Halo,
Spartan not only appeared more unfocused than ever but was in fact competing
with itself by producing rivals to its own Firestorm games.

Spartan's apparent naïveté concerning the market was also demonstrated
during the first Kickstarter they launched, in which they attempted to fund a
modular scenery project for which there was no apparent demand, and which did
not have a clear use with their own games. They also appeared to set an
excessively high funding threshold which was too ambitious for a company
performing their first Kickstarter. This project additionally tried to launch through the back door yet another game, a Greek Mythology-themed skirmish game called "Death or Glory". This project had to be canceled when it was
nowhere near completion, and created a sense that Spartan were approaching
projects and products willy-nilly, assuming that if they put a product out
enough people would buy it. Of course I cannot know what the situation really
was, but this was how it seemed to an outside observer.

3. Impenetrability

This may be a more personal reason of mine for Spartan's
problems, but in my view an issue with their products were that the rules for
their flagship games were too complicated. Dystopian Legions I found
manageable, but the rules for Dystopian Wars, when I tried to collect it, I
found virtually incomprehensible, and their sheer complexity and lack of
straightforward organisation put me off collecting the game any further. A
simplified rule set did attract my attention, but of course trying to manage
yet another set of rules was also Spartan seemingly stretching itself even
further.

It's okay that the South won the civil war in this universe because it was fought for different reasons...

(Probably Unfair) Comparison with Mantic Games

It's worth comparing Spartan with Mantic, who appear to have
been flourishing in recent years. They have used Kickstarter effectively and
have, like Spartan, launched numerous games: Kings of War, Dreadball, Deadzone,
Dungeon Saga, Warpath and two licensed games: Mars Attacks and The Walking Dead:
All Out War. Another game, Star Saga, is upcoming. So what's the difference?

1. Mantic supports their games if they are ongoing or
completes them if they are limited. Kings of War receives regular new releases.
Dungeon Saga had all of its expansions released so that the game was completed.
Spartan, by contrast, released about half of Dystopian Legions and then gave
up, apparently through a combination of insufficient return on their investment
and distraction by other projects. It's a different situation as Legions was
not Kickstarted, but it shows why there needs to be a clear plan for completing
a project when it is begun.

2. Mantic makes straightforward rules. Some might find them
a little too simple, but one of Mantic's biggest advantages are that their
rules are easy to understand. Learning the rules to Kings of War can be
achieved in one or two read-throughs. Learning how to play Dystopian Wars is a
project in itself.

3. Mantic provides a clear alternative to Games Workshop.
This is how Kings of War started, and this approach has continued to allow the
company to fill a niche, in this case for more affordable fantasy and science
fiction miniatures and for alternatives to long-dead Games Workshop board
games. Projects like Dystopian Legions missed an opportunity to poach similar
custom from existing collectors.

4. In their early Kickstarter days, Mantic set humble
funding goals. The initial Kings of War Kickstarter had a goal of $5,000 USD.
Compare that to Spartan's first Kickstarter, for the modular scenery no one
wanted, which asked for a rather unrealistic £80,000. Obviously the circumstances
are different, but it shows different levels of awareness of entering the
crowdfunding scene.

Now, I realise that Mantic has plenty of
its own problems with things like quality control and having issues with
deadlines at times, but nonetheless they've managed to take a fairly robust
approach. Perhaps this comparison is unfair, but Mantic have been, I would
argue, in a position to expand because of the nature of their product. Spartan
were not in a position to because of the largely more niche nature of their
products, yet tried to anyway.

Conclusion

How could you screw up British Redcoats in pith helmets
fighting Prussians in pickelhauben?

I hope the people who worked for Spartan
find their feet, and it'd be nice to imagine the Dystopian and Firestorm
intellectual properties falling into the hands of someone who can handle them
with a more focused and market-savvy approach. It's also possible that I have no idea what I'm talking about, and everything I said is based on random observation and a dilettante's "gut instinct" perception rather than anything scientific or rigorous. Nonetheless, in the meantime I'd
say the fate of Spartan functions best as a warning of the risks associated
with the current tabletop market and a reminder for businesspeople who are also
hobbyists to not let the hobbyist's passion and tendency towards distraction
overwhelm the importance of pragmatism and focus.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

I liked The
Conjuring, and I mostly like The
Conjuring 2. While their jump scares are a bit predictable, they generally
create a good, spooky, disturbing atmosphere mixed with entertaining
ghost-hunting pseudoscience (and pseudotech), and the two leads are very
watchable and likeable. The Annabelle
spinoff/prequel was complete schlock crap, but I didn't expect it to be
anything else, and regardless, well, let's just say I didn't exactly spend a
great deal of money to watch it, if you catch my drift. I wasn't exactly taken
with the idea of another film, a prequel to the prequel, but when I heard it
was getting decent reviews, I thought "Why not?"

Annabelle:
Creation feels like a few things. Firstly it feels like a
film which, way back at some point in the development process, was meant to
subvert some of the recurring elements of the Conjuring franchise and some clichés of modern horror films. The
reason I say "way back", however, is because it also feels like a
film which was rewritten by a Hollywood hack at some point. It thirdly feels,
with two overt links to other films, one already made and one forthcoming, as
another desperate attempt on the part of Warner Bros. to establish a "cinematic
universe" surrounding, I suppose, the demons featured in the Conjuring films.

The ever-credible Wikipedia informs me that director
David F. Sandberg, filmmaker of Lights
Out, took a less meticulously-storyboarded approach to this film, instead
opting for a "figure it out on the set" one. I believe this is PR
speak for "Warner Bros. and New Line didn't give me enough time and money
to make this properly." This shows, as while Lights Out is hardly a masterpiece, it perhaps still has threads of
Sandberg's YouTube viral-video auteurship in it, while Annabelle: Creation simply feels botched, like the half-made dolls
in the eponymous character's father's workshop.

Annabelle:
Creation's strongest moments almost entirely occur in its
first half, seemingly before the scripting or editing process, or both,
collapsed. While the premise of a group of vulnerable girls and resident nun
being sent to live in a somewhat spooky house out in the country is hardly
original, the film appears to be possibly doing something vaguely interesting
with Janice and Linda, two orphans hoping to become "real sisters" if
they are adopted by the same couple. This follows a fairly engrossing prologue
in which the titular Annabelle, innocent originator of the notes the doll would
come to drop, is abruptly hit by a car.

The problem is that this feeling of engagement
starts to fall apart when Janice, predictably, makes not one but repeated trips
to the dead girl's bedroom, almost as if she's a robot programmed to seek out
horror scenes. You'd think after having one spooky experience in there, as well
as finding the creepy doll, she'd tell that bedroom where to shove it, forcing
the demon to get a bit more creative, but that doesn't happen, and virtually
the rest of the film becomes a series of endless lead-ups to Janice or, later,
Linda, making sojourns to the late Annabelle's bedroom just to get spooked
again. I was finding the film reasonably enjoyable up until the point at which,
on Janice's second or third trip to the room, she witnesses what appears to be
an apparition of the dead girl. However, as we later discover, it's just a
demon pretending, and when Janice asks what she wants, she abruptly turns
around, adopts the yellow-eyed fanged horror face that every Conjuring demon has, and proclaims
"Your soul!" I was staggered at how unbelievably stock, generic and
cliché this moment was, especially in contrast to promise shown to that point, and
from this moment the film started to fail.

In this regard the film is infected with innumerable
clichés once it loses its drive, especially ones which make the Conjuring franchise as a whole seem
repetitive and stale: demons levitating people, demons telekinetically throwing
furniture around, the ancient trick of flickering lightbulbs and of course, a
more modern favourite, fleeing people being tripped and dragged by the ankles
back the way they came by an unseen force. The glimpses we get of the demon
itself show something appallingly generic, just a charcoal-skinned hornéd beastie
let loose from a medieval woodcut. Janice also gets trapped, frightened and
subsequently possessed in a manner highly reminiscent of the original Paranormal Activity film, especially
once she starts pretending she's fine when she obviously isn't. The barrage of
these desperately unimaginative moments makes the film predictable and, as a
result, boring, surely the worst sin a horror film can commit.

What makes this so exasperating is that the film
itself has some strong elements. As was the case with The Conjuring films, it gives a decent share of screen time to a
relatively large cast of relatively talented young actors; Janice and Linda are
particularly well cast, and their performances when they're still trying to
figure out their situation are fairly believable and likeable. The biggest
problem is when Janice is forced into the boring, routine
"possession" role which basically just means she becomes a child-sized
knife slasher with a creepy head tilt and waxy makeup. There is, however, some
effective use of humour, particularly derived from Linda's behaviour: her
willingness to leave Janice inside so she can go enjoy herself when Janice says
she's fine, her quick departure to avoid chores in the schoolroom and, best of
all, the cut from her declining to enter Annabelle's room (perhaps the only
time anyone makes this sensible choice) to a shot of her guarding her own
bedroom door against the fiend with a popgun she acquired earlier.

Yet none of this can compensate for what is perhaps
the film's biggest failing, a huge problem with pacing and structure, which
coalesces with the bombardment of horror clichés to make the viewing experience
of the last half-hour or so of the film tedious to the point of absurdity.
Miranda Otto, out for a quick buck, is forced to deliver an extremely clunky
exposition-dump immediately prior to her character being killed off, revealing
the origin of the demon in their home in a way that was partially obvious or
could have been guessed and partially could have been teased out through more
gradual storytelling. This hurls what should be the start of the film's climax
into a series of flashbacks. Furthermore, the film ends with an entirely
unnecessary epilogue linking this film's events directly and explicitly to that
of the previous Annabelle film, as if
anyone cared or remembered, assuming they'd seen it at all. Footage is reused
from early in that film to anticlimactically end this one. I also believe that
this involves some torturous storytelling, as the original film simply said the
doll was used by a demon after a cult ritual involving Annabelle, the
neighbours' wayward daughter. Now "Annabelle" is actually a demon
pretending to be a dead girl named Annabelle who possesses Janice who then calls
herself Annabelle who is adopted by the neighbours in the first film and grows
up to be the cultist, who then I think somehow puts the demon back into the
doll, as if it would want to go back into the doll. Good grief.

The most egregious element, however, is a brief
scene shoehorned into the first act (or so) of the film in which Sister
Charlotte, the girls' guardian, shows Annabelle's father a photograph of
herself with some other nuns, one of which is actually Valak, the demon from The Conjuring 2. This is obviously done
not just as a reference but as a piece of promotion for 2018's upcoming
"The Nun" film about the character, as the scene bears no other real
relevance to the plot or characterisation of this film. It's clearly another
pathetic attempt to rip off Disney/Marvel's successful, yet increasingly bland
and soulless, "cinematic universe" method, as Warner Bros. already
tried (and presumably has failed) to do with King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Universal is apparently
attempting with its dare-I-dignify-it-by-naming-it "Dark Universe"
franchise. By this stage it is so transparent that all it accomplishes is
making the surrounding film less immersive and damaging further any possibility
of suspending disbelief. This is exacerbated by a moment in the epilogue when Janice-possessed-by-the-Annabelle-demon is given a Raggedy Ann doll, which is what the "real" Annabelle doll is. The wink to the know-alls (like me) in the audience is just distracting, and it only leaves me thinking that using a Raggedy Ann doll would actually have been a lot creepier, if done well, than the overdesigned doll of the films, which I can't imagine anyone from even the most twisted era of American nursery culture not finding grotesque.

Fair play to David F. Sandberg for making the
transition from YouTube to Hollywood; his wife Lotta Losten, star of the
original Lights Out short, makes a
cameo in this, but unfortunately in the risible and exhausting epilogue
sequence. That doesn't change the fact, however, that Annabelle: Creation is a film I shouldn't have allowed to
disappoint me. Maybe someone who really cares could make a worthy fan edit of
this, eliminating CGI demon-faces, multiple trips to Annabelle's bedroom, the
epilogue and perhaps a sequence in which Linda, having laboriously descended the
house in the dumbwaiter, then decides to make the entire journey to the top
again in real time. The fact is, if more people had given a shit, this could
have genuinely been a standout piece of franchise horror-schlock. It might, for
instance, have used its premise to consider in some depth the crises of faith
and hope of orphans and people in similar situations of limited emotional
support. It might have used Janice and Linda's friendship to put a different
spin on the 'lone girl getting menaced in a spooky room' concept. It could even
have gone down more of a comedy route, mixing chills with gags for an
experiment with a sine-wave of mood. It doesn't, however, yet people are still
offering it praise. I simply don't understand why. To my mind, this is for Conjuring franchise completionists only,
if indeed it's for anyone at all.

Monday, May 1, 2017

It turns out that in 2016 I saw even more Hollywood films than I did in 2015. Bugger. As is the norm, let's start with my totally fair assessments of films I didn't see.

Eleven Films You
Might Have Expected Me To See But I Didn't:

10
Cloverfield Lane

I actually
quite liked the original Cloverfield for whatever reason and I've heard this is
quite decent. I'm curious.

Assassin's
Creed

I've played
the first four games to completion, and the next two a bit, but everyone knew
this was going to suck. The thing is, I feel like this could have been good in
different circumstances. Maybe it actually is good; I haven't seen it. It's not, though, is it? Poor old Fassbender.

Batman: The
Killing Joke

This
overrated comic didn't deserve the hype of being adapted into a cartoon, much
less one in which they had to make up new material to give it an adequate
runtime. I simply don't care.

Blair Witch

I'm not a
huge fan of the original Blair Witch film, but it does have some good creepy
elements to this day and I feel like I'll probably watch this followup at some
point.

Dad's Army

The idea of
turning yet another twentieth-century TV series into a modern feature film is
fairly repugnant to me, and while I've seen a reasonable amount of the show, I wasn't very
interested in seeing a bunch of modern actors pretending to recreate it.

Don't
Breathe

I heard
this was pretty good. I just haven't seen it. I want to.

Hacksaw Ridge

I only
heard this even existed when Oscars time came around. I'm curious, if only
because I've heard it's set during the war and is horror-movie-violent. I might look into it at some point.

La La Land

I also only
heard that this even existed around Oscar time. Apparently it's good. How come Ryan Gosling and Emma
Stone co-star in so many films? I want to see this.

Underworld:
Blood Wars

I like the
Underworld films for much the same reason as the Resident Evil films (see below). I don't
have much patience for trash, but action horror trash I have a little time for.
I'll probably see this at some point.

Warcraft

Nah.

X-Men:
Apocalypse

I only
watched Days of Future Past last year and enjoyed it more than I expected. I've
heard this isn't as good, but I'm sure I'll get around to it at some point.

Now here's a new category!

Nine Films I
Didn't See and You Might Not Have Expected Me to See Anyway, but Feel Like Mentioning or Taking the Piss Out Of:

Ben-Hur

What
Hollywood genius thought it would be a good idea to remake an old film (yeah, I
know it was originally a novel) that old people would consider sacrosanct and
young people wouldn't know of or care about?

The BFG

I know this
is a kids' film and I'm not the target market, but this was one of those things
where when I saw posters I thought "Since when were they making another
Roald Dahl film? Well, that marketing campaign missed the bus."

Finding
Dory

I actually
saw the end credits for this after I went into the cinema early before another
film. I've never seen Finding Nemo, so as much as I love some other Pixar
properties (Toy Story and The Incredibles), I couldn't give a shit about this.

Hunt for
the Wilderpeople

I've heard
that this is good. I wouldn't mind seeing it.

The Jungle
Book

Still
adapting Kipling, are we? I kind of want to argue that he's an extremely
outdated relic of nineteenth century imperialism, but Arthur Conan Doyle is too
and I love Sherlock Holmes, so I suppose I should shut my mouth.

Lion

I saw the
trailer for this a couple of times. Heartwarming I'm sure, but didn't look like
my cup of tea at all.

Miss
Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

I know it's
based on a novel, but to me it just looked like a cross between X-Men and
Narnia. Maybe it's worth it for Eva Green. I've long felt that Tim Burton is a
master of concept and incapable of satisfying execution, and I daresay this is
more of the same.

Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

Apparently
this adapted elements from the much-loved 80s cartoon show, which is kinda cool, but I
don't actually really care about the 80s cartoon show, so it'd be wasted on me.

Whisky
Tango Foxtrot

Having
binge-watched all of 30 Rock last year I sort of imagined that I'd end up
seeing this because of my Tina-Fey-loving friends, but I didn't. Apparently it
isn't very good. I daresay I'll see it in a bargain bin some day soon.

This leaves us with...

Fifteen 2016 Films I
actually saw:

Allied

When I saw
this I had no idea what it was going to be about or who directed it going in. Then it
became a somewhat simplistic espionage and romance drama set against World War
II, and when the mediocrity was over and the words "Directed by Robert
Zemeckis" appeared on the screen, I went "ah". I'm pretty sure
Zemeckis hasn't done anything of real value since Forrest Gump, and while this
film was kind of interesting, in that a man played by Brad Pitt discovers that
his wife, played by Marion Cotillard, might be a deep-cover Nazi agent, the first
half of the film, which is set in Casablanca and involves actual spying, is far
more interesting and atmospheric than the second, which is set in England and
mostly involved Brad Pitt feeling sad that his wife might be a spy. The cliché
ending, in which Cotillard's character shoots herself, despite being a victim
of blackmail, to save her husband's reputation, felt like the film casting
about for something interesting to end on, not being able to think of anything,
shrugging its shoulders and saying "tragic suicide it is, then."
Competent, but far from essential.

Batman:
Return of the Caped Crusaders

This is an animated
film, reuniting several cast members of the classic 1960s Batman television
show voicing themselves in animated form, with Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie
Newmar reprising their roles as Batman, Robin and Catwoman respectively. It's a
little over-long and I think it could have been divided into two "episodes"
like the TV show upon which it's based, but it's very charming and captures the
feeling of the old show well while simultaneously poking a bit of fun at its
more ridiculous elements. West, Ward and Newmar all sound pretty much right
after all these years and the absurd storyline has enough changes of focus to
prevent things from becoming too dull, with plenty of humour about the
ridiculous villain schemes, hideouts and traps, as well as Batman and Robin's
personalities, making it enjoyable to watch. It's a bit of fun.

Batman v
Superman: Dawn of JusticeSee my full
review of this here and listen to this podcast for views highly comparable to
mine. The first of my "Better Than I Expected" films of 2016, this is
a bad film, but I liked it enough to buy the blu-ray release of the extended
edition, which adds essentially nothing to the film. It's unnecessarily dark
and dour with an overcomplicated story, some tiresome CGI and an extremely
inept effort to introduce the other Justice League characters, but for me at
least it was largely carried by Ben Affleck's portrayal of Batman, which I
personally found rather engaging. However, as with Man of Steel, it doesn't do
anything very new or interesting with Superman, which largely makes me wish
this had just been a Batman film. This isn't a good piece of cinema by any
means, and I fully understand the opinions of those who hated it. I just liked
Batman, and, if I'm going to be honest, the fight between him and Superman was weirdly cathartic.

The
Beatles: Eight Days A Week

This
documentary on the Beatles' touring years was, in my opinion, a very
interesting insight into the lives led by the Fab Four during their most
frantic period of performance activity, from '62 to '66, when they were travelling the
world, struggling to hear their own instruments over the voices of screaming
teenagers, and being placed under constant scrutiny by a still very skeptical
media. The large use of archive footage is extremely effective in providing as
close as possible a view of what the time was like, and interview material,
both new for the survivors and archival, with the Beatles themselves, is
invaluable in enhancing this. Probably my only criticism would be that some of
the other "talking heads" in the film, like Richard Curtis, seem
pointless and trite. The appending of footage from the '66 Shea Stadium concert
was also a very intriguing view of what an actual Beatles concert was like by
the end of the period: by the looks of things, rushed, slightly on edge and
rather safe in terms of set list. Perhaps it's absurd to suggest that the Beatles, with all their
enormous success, had a bad time, but it's still a worthwhile depiction of
artists at risk of being trapped by their own fame, and how they avoided it.

Captain
America: Civil War

It'd be
remiss of me to argue that this isn't as relentlessly adequate as any Marvel film, and it
features some reasonably entertaining stuff involving Ant-Man and the new
Spider-Man. You can read my extensive review of it here. The thing that bothers
me the most about this film is that it's really an Avengers film, or even an
Iron Man film, rather than being a Captain America film, as while his actions
somewhat drive the plot it's fundamentally more about Iron Man and the Avengers
than it is about him. The problem I really have with both Russo brothers Cap
films is that they're basically just thrillers that happen to feature Captain
America, and as a fan of the character I find that personally frustrating.

The
Conjuring 2

I was a big
fan of the first Conjuring film, and while this sequel is pretty much more of
the same, it lacks the impact of the first one. I think I also struggled with
it a bit because I knew a bit more about the Enfield Poltergeist hoax going in,
so it was more difficult for me to handle how obviously and wildly divergent
the film's narrative is from anything that happened in reality. It's
entertaining and horror newbies might find it scary, but it relies more on
startles and creating a feeling of helplessness than any strong horror theme.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are both still very watchable as the Warrens
but I feel like James Wan's horror stylings are possibly getting a little played
out by this point. Nonetheless I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first
film.

Deadpool

Everyone
sure loved this film, didn't they? It's okay. My sentiments are the same as
those of some other reviews I saw at the time. It's watchable, but the plot is
a bit too safe for my liking, as it ultimately comes down to Deadpool trying to
save his girlfriend. If this had been subverted a bit I would have appreciated
it, but it isn't really. Ryan Reynolds is of course fine as the lead; I'm not a
huge Deadpool fan, so I can't say whether this was a satisfactory
representation of the character or not. My favourite elements were the use of
X-Men characters, in this case Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, which
added an element of comic-book camp into the film that was necessary and, in
fact, far more engaging than the serious way the X-Men are usually portrayed in
their own films. I also enjoyed "Deadpool's" (Reynolds') enthusiastic
admission at the end of the film that the sequel would feature Cable. Despite
being an unconventional superhero film, with its "mature" elements and
self-referentiality, this in many respects felt like a film that was more
comfortable actually being a comic
book movie than many which have been made over the last fifteen years or so, and I at least respect it for that.

Doctor
Strange

Speaking of
comfort, Doctor Strange was a film I recently saw which I think more or less
showed just how well-worn and comfortable the Marvel Studios formula has
become. I wish Benedict Cumberbatch didn't have to put on the American accent,
but I got used to it after a while, and the supporting cast of various wizards
is all decent, the highlight being of course Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One.
On the other hand, Rachel McAdams doesn't really need to be in the film and
seems largely to exist so Strange can have a sort-of love interest, and Mads
Mikkelsen's Kaecilius could have been more interesting than he ends up being;
he's somewhat let down, in a film full of interesting locations and curious
outfits, by his rather dull design: just a tunic and some purple eye shadow. I
also felt that some of the "reality altering" effects seemed
pointless. For instance, I'm not sure what purpose all the "running on
opposite sides of a catwalk" stuff achieved in the battle sequence in the
mirror dimension. As others have pointed out, Strange defeating Dormammu with
trickery rather than force was a nice variation on things. Yes, this was
ultimately a pretty safe film for such an unusual character, but I think it
maybe did just enough differently to get away with it. I only hope the presumed
sequel in which Strange fights Mordo takes this a bit further.

Fantastic
Beasts and Where to Find Them

I actually
enjoyed this film. The screenplay was by JK Rowling herself, and I think it
shows, as the quite distinct main plots and their interconnectedness or
possible lack thereof potentially evoke a novel's story rather than a
conventional cinematic narrative. The excessive use of CGI for the monsters is
of course a problem, and with less engaging characters it would have been dull;
Kowalski particularly was well implemented. My biggest problem with the film
was having the opponent revealed to be Grindelwald himself rather than just
being one of his servants or someone who supported his ideals, as I felt like
this compressed the size of the world a lot and made Grindelwald, who is meant
to be second only to Voldemort in terms of threat, seem far less dangerous than
he should have been. Hopefully the sequel explains why he let himself be so
easily captured. Also, Johnny Depp? Really? Anyway, I still found this
entertaining and would put it as another of my "Better Than I
Expected" films of 2016.

Ghostbusters
(2016)

The third
"Better Than I Expected" film of 2016, I've already reviewed this
here. Putting the idiotic controversy around it aside, I think this film works
best when not even viewed as a follow up to or reboot of the original films,
because the style of humour is completely different. Personally I found it
reasonably funny and liked the cast. Of course, it's got nothing on the
original, but in my opinion few American comedy films do (maybe Airplane?). The biggest problem
with the film is all the scummery that Sony engaged in behind the scenes, such
as threatening to sue Bill Murray if he didn't cameo in it. On the surface I
think it was made with a reasonable amount of sincerity. Not much more to say
about this one; you either like it or you don't.

Lights Out

Based on
and with the same director as a viral internet short film, this horror feature
about a ghost which only exists in darkness is a competent spooky experience but not
much more than that. Probably the most interesting thing about it is that it
contrasts to a lot of modern horror films, like the Paranormal Activity series,
by having the parent, rather than the child, being the one enabling the
creature to terrorise the family. Typically the child is the one who can see or
knows about the creature and is manipulated by it, but in this case it's the
mother, and it's quite disturbing to see her young son in distress due to her
own irrational willingness to let this thing haunt them, and the elder daughter
desperately trying to resolve the situation. Nonetheless, the way the problem
is resolved is, in my view, a bit cheap, and possibly doesn't convey a terribly
good message. It might be worth a watch but it's also not essential unless you want to support a budding director, which perhaps you should.

Resident
Evil: The Final Chapter

I haven't
seen all of the Resident Evil films, but the ones I have seen I've enjoyed for
their shameless trashiness. While this wasn't a particularly coherent follow up
to the previous film, it was enjoyable for dumb grotesque action and a sincere
if simplistic effort to resolve the entire plot. Probably what it missed was
appearances by more of the series' various supporting protagonists. Recurring
villain Wesker is also defeated in a very anticlimactic way. Nonetheless it
must be given kudos for the deeply amusing sequence in which Dr Isaacs'
cybernetic implants give him a prediction of how he can defeat Alice which ends
with him smugly sipping a glass of whisky. The worst thing this daft film could
have done was take itself seriously, and it didn't. It's still a stupid film,
but it's the kind where I don't care.

Rogue One

I would have dearly loved to have given this my "Worst Film of 2016" award because of how stupendously overrated this was at first release, but that would be
dishonest, because it's not badly made, just immensely cynical (perhaps even more than The Force Awakens), thinly written and, its biggest failing, extremely boring. I've
already reviewed it as much as I'd care to here. You can also listen to a
podcast here (and a follow up here) in which some folks I know express opinions highly comparable to
mine on the topic. I'm astonished that people think this is one of the best
Star Wars films. Personally I found it dull, with utterly two-dimensional characters and
a boring plot. At its core it's just fan-pandering, showing lots and lots of
stuff from the original trilogy, up to and including Darth Vader and a
creepily-recreated Governor Tarkin. I wish we could see what this would have
been before reshoots, as I suspect it would have been a lot better.

Star Trek
Beyond

I'm no fan
of the reboot Star Trek film series, as can be observed in my scathing review of Star Trek Into Darkness, which I awarded "Worst Film of 2013". As
a result I was surprised to discover that I didn't mind Star Trek Beyond. While
the plot is still quite boring - the Enterprise goes somewhere, they find a big
strong bad dude and at the end Captain Kirk punches him until he falls over -
it got me by. I think its biggest strength was that it used the cast as an
ensemble, particularly giving greater, deserved screentime to Karl Urban's
McCoy, who has always been my favourite in these films, rather than trying to
just focus on some angsty relationship between Kirk and Spock. Probably my biggest
gripe is that I think it's somewhat badly edited, with some sequences and
characters not being set up clearly or coherently, and I don't like the twee
way the alien fleet is defeated at the end, but I can live with it, and I think
it's almost certainly the best of the reboot films. I wonder if not having JJ
Abrams at the helm and/or, more likely, not having those two guys who wrote Transformers and Damon Lindelof
penning the script had anything to do with it not sucking as hard...

Yoga Hosers

I know nothing about Kevin Smith films, having only seen most of Clerks one time, which I thought was pretty good. While this film has nothing of the bite of that, in that it only tries to represent the vacuousness of modern youth rather than the hopeless pointless emptiness of modern life, I found it reasonably diverting and I was surprised that it was so unpopular. It reminded me of an Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg feature but less witty. Not sure what to say about this one. The two leads were engaging and Johnny Depp was tolerable. It's stupid and indulgent, but I didn't mind it.

Thus, of course, my "Worst Film of 2016" Award goes to:

Suicide
Squad

Batman v
Superman was one thing, but even I'm not going to try to defend this mess.
Frankly, I don't even know why it was made; only nerds like me have heard of pretty
much any of the characters in it, and none of them were established in the other DC universe films. Obviously any
value it had was wrecked in editing and reshoots, as the cast seems to be
introduced twice, there's a subplot about the Joker that doesn't seem to go
anywhere, and the main narrative is a "save the world" thing that doesn't
explain why they need a team of villains to handle it. Amusingly it won an
Academy Award. I liked Affleck's cameo as Batman and I suppose Will Smith and
Margot Robbie were okay as Deadshot and Harley Quinn, but the thing I most took
away from this was a feeling that no one who was involved in making this really
knew what they were doing. While it didn't bore me or annoy me to the same extent as Rogue One, I can't pretend that this wasn't a far bigger disaster.

Thus, by a process of elimination, my top film of 2016 award goes to:

NO AWARD (yet).

No 2016 film I actually saw deserved "top film", even though some of the better ones, like Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders and The Conjuring 2 kept me entertained; giving any of them "top film" would be going too far. I'll update this when I see a 2016 film that actually deserves it.